Diagnostics for developing countries: partnership models that work

Abstract

Advancements in genetics, biology, and materials science have now led to the development of a broad range of new diagnostic technologies for infectious diseases, including both instrumented and manual systems. Unsurprisingly, most commercial innovations target profitable markets in established market economies, and products are usually neither developed to be appropriate for resource limitations, nor marketed in disease-endemic countries (DECs). New public funding from both philanthropic and governmental sources makes the development of technologies appropriate for DECs possible. Likewise, newly available funding from international financing agencies such as the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM) and UNITAID have allowed the construction of aggressive programs to deliver new technologies to disease control programs. Tuberculosis diagnostics, long undervalued, have recently undergone dramatic advances, largely as the result of the funding streams mentioned above, along with the recognition that case detection remains a critical obstacle to global tuberculosis control. FIND, a public-private partnership established to meet the need for improved diagnostics for the developing world, has a deep and broad pipeline of TB diagnostics, some assays from which are already being implemented. This presentation will outline the process of public-private partnership for diagnostic development, and highlight some recent successes in developing simple and effective diagnostic assays built on sophisticated platforms.